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Journey started around 5.50am, almost late for the bus! It is going to be a 6 hours bus ride from Volgograd city to Elista - the capital of Republic of Kalmykia. This is the first time I see the Volga-Don Canal and its lock as well. It passed by too fast and I couldn’t snap a pic of it in time. However, you can view the picture from the link I set above.

The demography of the people changes almost instantly when we enter the border of the republic. We were seeing more Mongolian / Tibetan / Chinese look-alike. I almost had a cultural shock when I reached Elista. Imagine, the weather and buildings are Russian-like, but 90% of the people are Kalmik (Mongolian / Tibetan / Chinese look-alike) and 10% of them are Russians. The city is more like a fusion of Buddhist art, Mongolian history and Russian soviet history (you will know what I mean when you see those pictures down there). You can see Tibetan Buddhist influences in their architectures, temples and even the flag of Elista is the symbol of a lily.

Our first destination is the Central Temple.

This was Europe’s biggest temple some time ago. Dalai Lama XIV was here and gave his blessings at the year of 2004. It has the Tibetan influences. I found out that when you visit such Tibetan temples, you should move from the left in a clock-wise manner around the temple and enter it at the end of your walk. I read about this in the library at the basement of this temple, after making an anti-clockwise walk around the temple! Wasted. The place is a little bit big for a second round so I decided to just let it be :P

By the way, the marshrutka here has a conductor to collect money and open the door for you. So weird!

Some other pictures around the compound.

And these are some of the bus stations!

And later on we walk around the city and this is what we found.

Pagoda in the park!

This is also what we found in a park. Not a temple. It felt so weird to have a Buddha statue in the middle of the park. LOL. Luckily the weather is good and we manage to take some nice photos. The people there look less intimidating and not so heavy handed compared to the Russians. People seems to be happy and enjoying their Sunday stroll.

And we proceed to yet another temple, quite far away from the town.

Weird? Just a temple, in the middle of no where. Haha. Well, I think this is for them to really practice and train their minds huh?

Nice sunset picture.

And we spent our whole day with minimum activities actually. We tried some Kalmik tea thou, which taste like tea plus salt. Too bad the horse milk season is out. We almost have that chance to try them! The ride back was yet another tiring 6 hours. This time, the seats are real small and I’m a little bit worried about DVT today. Reached home around 1am midnight. Tired but glad that I saw something new today. Russia is indeed - multiracial.